


Value Me

by crossroadswrite



Series: _____ Me [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Derek Comes Back, Derek Hale is Stiles Stilinski's Anchor, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Nemeton Aftermath, Post season 3a, and then promptly leaves again with Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 07:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4910746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossroadswrite/pseuds/crossroadswrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Stiles values Derek too much to call him back home and Derek values Stiles too much to stay away.<br/>.<br/>Stiles sighs. He’s so tired. So fucking tired of all of this.</p><p>It’s been one and a half months since the darkness of the Nemeton wrapped tight around Stiles’ heart. It’s been one month and a week since Derek left and the darkness dug itself into Stiles, shattered brittle fingers puncturing his lungs and leaving him scrambling for breath.</p><p>Nowadays he feels like he’s drowning all the time.</p><p>“We’re not calling Derek,” he declares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Value Me

Stiles blinks at the white of the hospital’s ceiling slow and measured, breathing out through his nose and ignoring how his chest pulls with the deep exhale.

“Stiles,” Scott says cautiously, passing the threshold of room 40.

Stiles doesn’t even bother looking at him. He knows what he’ll see there and he’s not interested in it.

“Stiles, you should call him.”

Breathe in. Ignore how the stitches pull at his stomach. Breathe out.

“No.”

He catches Scott pulling a chair to his bedside and sitting heavily on it, leaning forward until he can touch Stiles’ arm gently.

“Stiles please. It’s getting worse and he can-“

“I’m fine. It’s fine. I have this under control,” he assures.

Scott makes a noise that’s something close to a growl and Stiles wonders if maybe it’s an Alpha thing. He doesn’t remember Scott growling before the entire True Alpha shitshow happened.

His friend aggressively takes his hand off Stiles’ arm and pushes himself backwards.

“Are you _serious?_ ”

“I told you I’m-“

“You stabbed yourself with a knife, Stiles. No. An _evil fox spirit_ who is _still_ possessing you made you stab yourself with a kitchen knife. How is that okay? You got hurt, Stiles!”

Stiles sighs. He’s so tired. So fucking tired of all of this.

It’s been one and a half months since the darkness of the Nemeton wrapped tight around Stiles’ heart. It’s been one month and a week since Derek left and the darkness dug itself into Stiles, shattered brittle fingers puncturing his lungs and leaving him scrambling for breath.

Nowadays he feels like he’s drowning all the time.

“We’re not calling Derek,” he declares.

Scott is quiet for a while. When he speaks it sounds desperate.

“ _Please_. I don’t know what to do and Dr. Deaton said it would help to have him here for you.”

Stiles takes another deep breath and taps his fingers into the linen. Counts them: one, two, three, fo-

“Lydia’s going out of her mind with _guilt_. Your dad started smelling like liquor again and I can’t stand not being able to hel-“

“Do you even listen to yourself?” he interrupts, turning towards Scott for the first time, lips twisted over his teeth and he’s sure it looks nasty and mean but he can’t listen to this anymore.

“Stiles you have to think about-“

“ _Do you even listen to your-fucking-self Scott?”_ he demands and raises his voice this time. He would get up if he could. He would ball his fist tight and throw a punch across Scott’s jaw. “Because all I’m hearing here is how _Lydia_ feels and how _my dad_ feels and how _you_ feel. How _me_ getting hurt makes _you_ feel.

“Did you even take a minute to _think_ about what I want, did you even think what coming back would do to Derek? Do you even care, truly care about how I feel or are you just upset because my injuries make you feel useless?”

He’s not being fair and he knows he’s not being fair but he’s hurt and he’s sleep deprived and he’s drowning, he’s fucking drowning and he can’t clear the haze of darkness constantly clouding him.

“Stiles you don’t mean that. Please, be reasonable. Derek can help you. Let him help you, let us-“

“Are you even listening to me, Scott. I don’t want Derek to help me. I don’t want Derek to come back because he deserves so much better than this shithole. He deserves so much better than you calling him like some attack dog every time you need someone to act as a punching bag- _don’t_ make that face, you know it’s true. You know how everyone just _uses_ him without a second thought and I’m not going to be the next one to do it.”

“You can die!” Scott gets up then, towering over him.

Stiles huffs. “Big deal.”

Scott’s muscles bunch with restrained action before he slumps again.

“Stiles. Stiles, _please_. You’re my brother I can’t-“

“He didn’t ask for this,” Stiles reminds him. “He didn’t ask for any of this, he didn’t ask to be a spaz’s anchor and he didn’t ask to have his family taken away from him and he didn’t ask to be abused over and over and he doesn’t deserve any of it. He doesn’t deserve the weight of being my stupid fucking anchor, whatever the hell that means. So no. I’m not calling him back, I’m not risking another horrible thing happening to him. He’s- he’s too good to have that kind of shit happen to him and I’m done, Scott.

“I’m so done with standing in the sidelines as a shitstorm hits him again and again and fucking again. It breaks my heart every time. And if I can prevent it you can bet your ass I damn well will.”

Scott opens his mouth but is rudely interrupted by the hospital room’s door bursting open.

“You-“ Derek says from the doorway, seeming to choke on his own words.

Stiles sees him and it’s like a balm and he hates it. He _hates_ how the next breath he takes comes in easier, he hates how something settles in him, how he feels control at the tips of his fingers where it once had been unreachable, where he had been grasping for it for over a month.

“You called him,” he hisses at Scott. “What the fuck, Sco-“

“Lydia called me,” Derek interrupts, hesitating before walking into the room. “She said you were hurt.”

“I’m fine,” Stiles dismisses. “They’re exaggerating. You can go back to sipping mojitos with Cora or whatever it is you like to do with your free time. You’re not needed here so shoo. Skedaddle.”

Derek sighs a very quiet, “Stiles.” and reaches across the distance, setting a hand on his shoulder so fucking gently it makes something in Stiles’ gut ache and it’s not from the knife wound.

The touch is like a shock. The touch is making it real.

Stiles takes a shaking hand and reaches for Derek’s other hand almost without thought, taps all five of his fingers and closes his eyes.

Counts again.

One, two, three, four, five.

“I’m real,” Derek states, sounding closer now and Stiles lets his eyes fly open, watches the way Derek hovers a little, face pinched in worry.

Stiles lets go of him, tries not to think too hard about how Derek could possibly know about that.

It’s not like the dreams in which Derek is there and pulls him out of whatever test _it_ is currently putting Stiles through are real.

“Stiles?” Derek asks in worry and it’s so ridiculous that Stiles knows exactly what he’s asking for. It makes all his _feelings_ for this man something so beyond hopeless.

“I’m fine. Just a little cut.”

“The Nemeton?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m-“

“If the next words out of your mouth are sorry I swear I will beat you over the head with my IV drip.”

Derek clicks his mouth shut, goes to pull back and something in Stiles snaps, alarm bells ringing out loudly through his ears as panic swells up inside him. He throws out his hand and clutches at the front of Derek’s shirt, pulling at his stitches painfully.

Derek stops and looks startled at the hand around his shirt.

“Should I?” Scott asks and right he’s in the room too. Right. Stiles looks over just in time to see Scott getting up and quietly leaving the room.

He’s still clutching Derek by the front of his shirt.

“I.” He licks his lips and looks down. “I don’t want you to stay,” he tells Derek.

Derek moves his arm and grips Stiles by the elbow, some of the pain drifts away as soon as their skin touches.

“I don’t either.”

Stiles nods, because of course. Derek would be insane to want to stay here. “You need to leave then.”

Derek sighs and scoots to sit on the edge of Stiles’ bed. It’s a less awkward position than being bent over him, a more comfortable one.

“That’s not what I meant. I meant.” He stops, seems to gather himself before he says, “I meant that I don’t want you to stay either.”

“What?”

“I don’t- it’s not safe for you here, Stiles. I can’t leave you here alone.”

“It’s not that ba-“

“I see the dreams too, Stiles. The- the anchor thing. It goes both ways.”

Stiles might stop breathing for a second or two there but it’s the good kind of not breathing, it’s the surprised awed kind of not breathing, not the suffocating kind that tries to rip his life away.

“I didn’t mean to put that on you. I didn’t mean to-“

“You’re such an idiot,” Derek tells him and it sounds fond. “You didn’t. That’s not how it works.”

“Oh,” he says, very quietly. His fingers spasm where they’re clutched on Derek’s chest. He slowly uncurls them.

“Yeah.”

Stiles looks down at the bedspread.  “Why me?”

“I like you. You’re- everything. I-“ Derek clears his throat and looks down too.

When Stiles looks back up he can see where the blush is starting to tint Derek’s ears.

He feels his lips curl almost against his will. Derek likes him. Derek came back even though it’s stupid. Derek wants him to go with him and honestly, given the nightmares and the insomnia and the self-harm _it_ likes to inflict on Stiles he’s inclined to say yes.

“I can’t go forever. I can’t just leave my dad.”

“Not forever,” Derek reassures. “For a while. Just for a while, until you’re settled again.”

Stiles takes a deep breath and it tastes like relief in the back of his throat.

“Just for a while,” he agrees and reaches out, locking his shaking fingers with Derek’s steady ones.

«»

Derek hugs him for the first time thirty miles away from Beacon Hills after Stiles almost bursts his stitches throwing up black goo and fireflies into the toilet of an almost forgotten, off-route gas station.

He tucks Stiles in his arms, even though Stiles is actually _taller_ than him and rubs soothing circles on his back.

«»

Derek kisses him for the first time in the middle of nowhere, overseeing a small town up on a cliff when they’re both sitting on the bumper of Derek’s mom car with greasy fingers and chain fast food restaurant wrappers separating them.

He cradles Stiles’ jaw and kisses him quiet, pulls back with a quip about how he can’t _just_ _enjoy the view in silence_.

Stiles pulls him into another kiss and tells him he can when it’s worthwhile.

He hopes the kind of breathlessness he gets when he kisses Derek is the only one he’ll have to experience for the rest of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> much like shit, angst happens. good thing i'm a sucker for happy endings tho.


End file.
